Galadria’s Holy Priest Raiding Guide

Author’s note: This guide was written while Patch 2.3 was active. All info/gear/talents/spells that were introduced or changed since then are not included or considered unless otherwise noted. If you would like to contribute to updating this guide with information relevent to Patch 3.0.2 please let me know. Some updated information is available from A Dwarf Priest in her Patch 3.0.2 Survival Guide.

A. Introduction

I would recomend starting with the WoWWiki pages on Priests. Then read the Lux et Umbria Guide on the WoW Forums. It has a lot of information on the Priest class and goes into a lot of detail.

B. Blogs – These are some of the blogs that I like to read (my own included… shameless plug here)

SW Stats – Has some great features for tracking healing done, mana efficency, decursing, etc. (required for OLN)

Item Rack – Addon to swap out gear sets. Very nice for switching out of DPS and healing sets.

SmartBuff – This one keeps track of your buffs. When one expires it will splash a message on the screen and make an annoying noise, it will recast the buffs with a scroll of the mouse wheel. Healbot apparently does some similar stuff but I’ve never used it.

D. Stats

The stats important to a healpriest are as follows:

+Healing

MP5

Spirit

Intellect

Stamina

I consider them approximatley in that order of importance, but you need a balance of them all. The recomended minimum stats for going into Kara are as follows for priests, all unbuffed:

Mana – 7k pre-Curator, 8.5k post-Curator, can be on the lower side if MP5 is high

Health – 6-7k HP, Attumens Charge can crit for upwards of 8k so it’s a good idea to be on the higher side if you can manage it

MP5 – 85 absolute minimum, 120 recomended, some recomend 150 for post-Curator but I’m not sure that much is necessary.

It’s reasonably easy to achieve these stats with the Tailoring Epics. I put Solid Star of Elune’s in all my blue slots to help with the Stam, and healing gems in the other slots. The healing enchants listed below are also very important to get to that 1.5k +Heal.

E. Gear

The Primal Mooncloth and Whitemend sets are HIGHLY recommended for Priests. I wrote an article in my blog about why, but here’s the short version. The Tailoring gear is comparable to Tier 4 stuff. The +Heal on Tier 4 is about 60 less than the Tailoring, but the other stats are higher. Tailoring is also available at 70 (assuming your Tailoring is high enough, PMC is BoP) and you have to get all the way through Magtheridon to get all of Tier 4.

Here are some specific gear recomendations for each slot before entering Kara. These are by no means the only options and I’ve tried to include items from various sources (quests, instances, badge rewards, and heroic instances)

Head – I definatley recommend Whitemend Hood, it is BOE crafted by Tailors; the mats are expensive but well worth the effort. Other than that my best recomendation would be Watcher’s Cowl which you can get from Cenarion Expedition at Revered

Legs – Golden Spellthread, or Silver Spellthread made by 375 Tailors with Exalted or Honored with Aldor

Feet – Enchant Boots – Vitality or Enchant Boots – Fortitude

G. Talent Builds

Most raiding Holy Priests will have one of 2 talent builds. 23/38/0 Disc/Holy or 20/41/0 Disc/Holy. A less common but still viable Disc build would be 41/20/0.

A small disclaimer: these talent builds are samples. There are many changes you could make, and I highlight a few of them, that would still be viable raiding builds. Take everything with a grain (or three) of salt and do what works for you and your play-style.

This build takes 23 points into Disc to get Imp Divine Spirit. If you are the only Priest in a raid I definatley think this is the way to go. Some of the points in the early Tiers of the Disc tree are interchangeable, but to me, the important ones are: 2/2 Imp PW:F, 1/1 Inner Focus, 3/3 Meditation, 5/5 Mental Agility, and 3/3 Divine Spirit. The other points can be spread around into Imp PW:S, Absolution, Silent Resolve, and Imp Inner Fire. In the Holy tree I think this is the best placement of points for raiding. Some don’t like Holy Concentration, but I find it procs often enough to make it worth the 3 points (if you follow it with an Inner Focus when it procs your sure to get a few good seconds outside the 5 sec rule). If you don’t take Holy Concentration, move points from Holy Specalization to Spell Warding since you won’t be getting as much advantage from the crits. The other place for variation is putting the points into Healing Prayers and taking them out of Spiritual Guidance.

This build will become much more viable with the buffs to CoH that are comming in Patch 2.3. The Holy talents are very similar to the previous build with the addition of CoH and the same comments from the earlier build apply to the Disc tree.

With a Disc build you won’t have the big #’s from your heals, but you’ll get huge boosts to your base stats making you more Pally-like, able to heal for smaller #’s for long periods of time. You’ll also get 20% boost to healing on a 3 min cooldown. In the Holy Tree, I’d definatley take Spell Warding over Holy Specalization since you won’t have Holy Concentration.

[…] pleased to announce another addition to my 5-Star Blogs: Welcome, Galadria’s Holy Light. Her Holy Priest Raiding Guide is one of the definitive works on gearing and prepping your healy priesty for the Outland End […]

[…] pleased to announce another addition to my 5-Star Blogs: Welcome, Galadria’s Holy Light. Her Holy Priest Raiding Guide is one of the definitive works on gearing and prepping your healy priesty for the Outland End […]

Lots good info here I just dinged 69 last night so looking to start running SL and other higher instances was after some advice if you dont mind that im horde player 😛 http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Turalyon&n=Jaco this is my armoury link any chance you could let me know if this build ok just now for me or do i need change some talents. This all quite new to me but loving the healing side as I normally play a 70 combat sword rogue .

@Jaco
If you’re not raiding and I’d even say not 25-man raiding, CoH is mostly worthless. Divine Spirit is very usefull to your self and your other casters so I can’t recommend passing on it. I’d recommend something like the Imp DS build I have up there. Feel free to e-mail me if you’d like some more in-depth information or recommendations.

@Jaco
I did see that after I wrote this comment. I hope every thing works out for you. Like I said, if you’d like some more in-depth information, feel free to e-mail me.

@DM
I’ll look into that one, thanks for pointing that one out.

@Demmona
If you come back here and look at this, send me a sample talent build or an armory link and I’ll take a look. I’ve never actually played a Disc build so I’m not sure what a good healing Disc build would look like going that deep.

It was very helpful Galadria. I’m running kara now and In 1 day, after reading this guide, I increased my +healing from 1010 to 1400 and it was mostly due to this guide. I was able to focus on certain items (you listed) that I knew I could get rather easily! In Kara I still seem to die rather frequently on Nightbane as he tends to target me a lot with his smoking blast and the other healers in the raid seem to slow to keep me up. 😛

@Faithdriven
Excellent work! I’m glad you were able to improve your gear so easily! For Nightbane, if you have a Pally, you can get him/her to spam heal him/her-self. The aggro during the air phase is healing aggro only and the damage is mitigatable by armor, the pally will mitigate the damage and heal himself through it and you and the other healer keep the raid up. Also a premptive Fade right before he the Rain of Bones starts (and don’t do anything until after you Fade) will help with the aggro.

Thank you Galadria I’ll try to get the guild to try that technique. 🙂 Makes sense to me now that I’m always getting nuked during the air phase as I’m typically healing the raid quite a lot during that phase.

@Faithdriven
Priests are well suited to group healing that phase of the fight, but you need to have someone taking the healing aggro, Fade helps a lot and if you can use things like Frisbee and Binding that have reduced/redirected threat it should work better for you. Good Luck!!

Glad to see that I’m not mad for putting Solid Stars in all my blue sockets 😀

Great gear guide btw. Currently working on my Keepers rep for Bindings of the Timewalker, Sha’tar rep for the Gavel of Pure Light and heroic badges for a Voodoo Shaker off-hand to go with it. The last two will replace my Seer’s Cane that has served me well for quite some time now.

Just noticed something…
“If you don’t take Holy Concentration, move points from Holy Specalization to Spell Warding since you won’t be getting as much advantage from the crits.”

HC doesn’t need a crit to proc…
“Gives you a 6% chance to enter a Clearcasting state after casting any Flash Heal or Greater Heal spell. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next Flash Heal or Greater Heal spell by 100%.”

Could you possibly expand on what spells to cast at which stage, what ranks, and break down in stats of how much healing is spent per mana, during which fights it’s the most efficient. I plan on getting a lvl 70 priest but I’ve never played a holy priest before and dont know which spell to spam.

This is great, thanks 😀 I leveled 10-60 pure holy, switched to shadow/disc at 60 and have been shadow for about 6 months now. I want to go back to holy…but its been awhile.
This guide is EXTREMELY helpful, especially the bit about stat requirements for Kara, and suggested gear.
Thanks a ton :3

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but when clicking the links into the talent calculator you give it shows talent lines that are completely impossible. Just picking the Imp Divine Spirit build it shows 2 points on Pain Suppression, which you can’t reach with 25 points, & also 5 points onto Spirit of Redemption, 4 onto Imp Renew, ect. I noticed things like this in all the links, not entirely sure how it’s like that. Also updating this for the Isle of Quel’danas would be wise, since they offer a very nice healing pendant when exalted: http://thottbot.com/i34677 (if the link shows… :S) I also have the healing mace from Revered & that seems very nice with the Lamp of Peaceful Repose. I’m not an expert on having a healer, seeing as I’m looking for a bit of help to see what I can improve, but I thought maybe this would be helpful in some way.

Bah, hate to post twice in a row but forgot something. ^^; I was wondering what would be the best helm inscription to buy as a Horde player. You posted one for Alliance players, but as a Blood Elf, I don’t think I could get into Honor Hold. 😛 Scryer has threads tailors can make for their pants as well, just need the other 10,500ish rep til Exalted to get the best thread pattern. :Shttp://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackwater+Raiders&n=Tanallia
There’s the link to my armory profile if you wish to inspect, maybe you could give me a few tips on what I could do to my gear or if there’s anything I should improve.

@Tina
As I said at the top of this post I haven’t played since before Patch 2.4 and this guide doesn’t reflect any of those changes. Since I’m not playing anymore I don’t have the ability to update the guide, but thought I’d leave it here as some of it will still be aplicipable. As for the talent builds, I’m guessing it’s a bug from the WoW Talent Calculator. If I have some time, I’ll go back and update those links. Thanks for the comment. I will take a look at your armory page and send you an e-mail with any advice I have.

Absolutely awesome guide! I’ve been pouring over this for many hours now taking notes too trying to up my healing, regen, and generally having an expanded look into planning for the future of my holy priest. I found everything that I could ever ask for between you and other submitters also….
Thank you!

Sweet guide =), nice and succinct, and covers everything you need to know. I have a 49 priest (Andar, human male, frostmane), he is going to be my second 70, hopefully. Its a bit early to be thinking of raiding, but I’m leveling my tailoring (its at 300) so I can start making PMC as soon as possible and walk straight in to my healing set at 70. I love reading blogs by people who love this game as much as me! I’m jealous that your husband plays with you, I have yet to convince my fiance to play. At least she doesn’t mind me playing I guess =P